Friday, March 2, 2012

Have We Calculated The Cost?

The question is: which one is your friend and which one is your enemy? Your enemy is not the 51% Malay voters who voted Barisan Nasional in March 2008. Your enemy is certainly not the 49% Malay voters who voted Pakatan Rakyat in March 2008. Your enemy are those who walk in the corridors of power in Putrajaya and the 2,500 Umno delegates who attend the Umno general assembly to elect their party President who then becomes the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

I do not deny that it is very important for voters to identify who is the enemy and who is the friend. Once we have identified who is the real enemy and who are your friends, then at least you have a clear point of focus. I do not like to chastise or mock other people for voting for the wrong reasons. I acknowledge that it is their own choice to do so. However after seeing the effect from making the wrong choice and paying a terrible price in the way of suffering, I get very angry and agitated at those who made the wrong choice and as well at what Pete refers to "those who walk the corridors of power".

What he wrote above has caught my attention to write my opinion which I have thought for a while back.

The aftermath of Hulu Selangor and Bagan Pinang by-elections is the case in point where I get angry at people making wrong choices. And I've seen news reports of people there complaining about not getting what they need when they put in the "grand old party and its scale" in power back. I am angry when by putting bad apples to run the country (those who do bad like corruption, getting away with crimes) people who choose their leaders poorly are indirectly saying that bribing, murder, white-collar crimes at the highest level is legitimate, permitted and we turn our eye blind from it as long it is money. But while we make these choices, have we actually calculated the cost of our mistakes?

The next general election will hinge on the 40% of the voters who are on top of the fence. They those who are full of uncertainty of picking which party to run the government from either mid-2012 or 2013 onwards. The issues to be raised here is have they see what would be the consequences like if they make a bad choice? Which side are they going for - those who want to keep the old guard or those who felt the need to shake the nation up after 55 years? Never mind the 30% of each side who are dead fixed on following the ideology of the coalition, but it will be a tug of minds to get the remaining 40% voting.

There have been people who worried, like myself over what future would behold if the wrong choice is ultimately made. Apart from seeing more corruption, bankruptcy can be reality in the next 3 to 6 years, with Malaysia ultimately capitulating to the demands of the IMF and the World Bank. Socially, the society ladder, where Malaysia is supposedly should move up will remain in the neo-feudalistic level as it is. And of course along the way, racial politics will still remain.

Everyone should take the share of the blame. We've been quite ignorant and making the same mistakes over and over again. We've been succumbing / buckled to false threats and temptations to the same party who have been sweet-talking over the last 55 years and so forth yet at times break promises.

How will one realize of the cost of making the wrong choice, particularly for those who have voted many times? I can identify one possible solution, but a very distasteful one. If I say that is the only way, I feel that some people would be "hati kecil" over an over-the-top act. I have said a few times way back that sometimes "an insult is necessary to wake people up". Sure, anyone who may have the same opinion as I do would do that at the risk of making people "small hearted" - but for greater good and shaking things up.

One identified risk is that for us who are voting for the future, our children / grandchildren will someday scold us and despise us for all life if we give them the wrong future by making the wrong choice. This goes out to everyone and those who refuse to see the reality beyond the veil of illusion that is sown by the mainstream media - instructed to write things that sugar-coat realities mere to please. I worry that one day a child of mine would spit on me and said that "Daddy has been ignorant and making it legit for what is morally wrong." I've heard opinions and decisions from the young that many are prepared to move out to other countries to work and never come back if the situation and outcome remains as bad as it is right now. There goes TalentCorp to the waste.

While we are squabbling over the fault of one race or vice versa, we've been dropping our priority objective which is to ABU. Anything But UMNO can't just be another mere slogan. It has to be translated into action. The first and foremost objective and priority that has to be focused is to at least reduce the BN majority, or if desirable replace it with the other government. This of course needs people to know who's your friends and who's the enemy. If we're to whack the enemy to kingdom come, your friends have to avoid making the bad choice - and it requires helping one another to do so.